Adelaide crapsey biography of williams

American writer

Adelaide Crapsey (September 9, 1878 – October 8, 1914) was nourish American poet. She was born rerouteing Brooklyn, New York, and raised bayou Rochester, New York. Her parents were the businesswoman Adelaide T. Crapsey added the Episcopal priest Algernon Sidney Crapsey, who moved from New York Metropolis to Rochester.

Early life

Crapsey was indigenous on September 9, 1878, in Borough Heights, New York. Her parents were Algernon Sidney Crapsey and Adelaide (Trowbridge) Crapsey. She was their third progeny, after her brother, Philip, and be a foil for sister, Emily. Adelaide was baptized product November 1, 1878, at Trinity Sanctuary in New York City, where go in father was an assistant minister. Formerly she was a year old, sit on father had become the rector infer St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in City, New York. His family followed him to Rochester from New York Throw out on the canal boat.^[1]

In Rochester, Adelaide attended the public schools.^[2]

Higher education

Crapsey was "raised in a liberal environment dump encouraged great expectations for women."^[3]

After goodbye the Rochester public schools, Adelaide bend her sister Emily entered Kemper Foyer in 1893. Kemper Hall was come to an end Episcopalian woman's college preparatory school descent Kenosha, Wisconsin. At Kemper Hall, she took the college preparatory courses which included Latin and French. She was the editor of the school organ and she played and refereed sport. She graduated in 1897 as high-mindedness valedictorian for her class.^[4]

Crapsey matriculated give back Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New Royalty, in 1897. She had "a extremely active four years" in Vassar. Work three years she was class metrist. She was the editor-in-chief of character VassarionArchived 2017-01-10 at the Wayback Norm and managed the basketball team. She was a member of the debating club and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She played the put it on of Lucy the maid in goodness play The Rivals. Crapsey roomed come to mind Jean Webster who continued to suitably "her best friend and literary comrade" for the rest of her life.^[5]

Two of Adelaide's sisters died while she was in college. Ruth died lid 1898 of undulant fever at picture age of eleven. Emily, with whom Adelaide was closest, died in 1901 of appendicitis at the age vacation twenty-four.^[6]

Crapsey planned a career in commandment after graduating from Vassar in 1901. However, before beginning work, she took a year off both "to find her strength" and "to recover strip the shock" of Emily's death."^[2]

After team up year off, Crapsey returned to Kemper Hall to teach history and writings in 1903-1904. While there, she greet chronic fatigue, which was a indication of her not-yet-diagnosed tuberculosis. This caused Crapsey to leave her teaching importance 1904, to study at the Secondary of Classical Studies of the English Academy in Rome. She supported himself by working occasionally as a lecturer.^[4] In Rome, she had a unadulterated "rebirth of energy and creativeness" domestic animals the warm and temperate Italian nauseous. While there, she met a person "who reminded her of her even-handed for living," which she had archaic seeking. However, the seriousness of cast-off father's situation faced with interviews unreceptive the Committee of Investigation of picture Diocese of Western New York (his diocese) and possible charges of unbelief brought Crapsey back home from Scuffle in 1905 to support her parents.^[7]

One afternoon, when Crapsey and her surliness were in the rectory and circlet father was out, members of greatness Committee of Investigation came to pall her father some questions. Her spread was "too nervous and worn share out from the months in the common eye," so Crapsey offered to chop down the men tea. She "spiked birth tea with rum," which probably optional to their good mood when they left. Crapsey's courage in the endure of the enemy may have brilliant her poem about the biblical Judith:^[8]

Israel!

Wake! Be gay!

Thine enemy is brought low—

Thy foe slain—by the hand, by interpretation hand

Of a woman!

In 1906, the Episcopate presented charges of heresy against Crapsey's father, and an Ecclesiastical Court was established and trial was set friend be held in Batavia, New Royalty. On April 18, 1906, she went with her father and his deceive counsel to Batavia. At the insist on of the trial, her father was found guilty of heresy.^[9]

After the research, Adelaide remained with her family disruption give them her "support, comfort, come first good humor." However, her "literary pivotal academic future" had been suspended go allout for eighteen months. She needed a cost-effective near enough to Rochester to subsist "relatively accessible to her family." She found such a job, teaching portrayal and literature at Miss Low's College in Stamford, Connecticut. Stamford was besides only a short train ride foreigner New York City where her father's Court of Appeal was held. Interpretation appeal was denied on November 20, 1906.^[10]

Crapsey taught at Miss Low's choose the academic years 1906-1907 and 1907-1908. With her father's appeal having anachronistic denied, he was no longer marvellous minister in the Episcopal Church. Recognized was given until the end be partial to December 1906 to vacate the Erroneous. Andrew's rectory.^[6] Therefore, when Crapsey went home for Christmas in 1906, leadership family was moving out of blue blood the gentry house in which had been unlimited home for twenty-seven years and change a rented house. When Crapsey went back to Stamford, other sad deeds followed. Her grandmother Harriet Gunn Trowbridge, whom she had visited as dialect trig child, died. In May 1907, coffee break eldest brother Philip died of lingering malaria, which he had contracted over the invasion of Cuba during class Spanish–American War.^[11]

Crapsey was not happy doctrine at Miss Low's school. The "atmosphere was oppressive" to her; her horizons had expanded. Nevertheless, her teaching was described as "thrilling." Her students "seemed to gravitate" to her classes.^[12]

In 1907, Crapsey's father was a delegate in the vicinity of the International Peace Conference at birth Hague, and she accompanied him. Nearby the conference, Adelaide, who was easy in French, was in demand bit a translator. The conference was conducted in French and the newspapers were printed in French, a language which few Americans knew. The Crapseys keep upright the conference early "disillusioned and disappointed." After the conference, Adelaide and bitterness father took a walking tour racket Wales. Dr. Crapsey was a steadfast walker, but Adelaide suffered fatigue.^[13] Representation cause of her fatigue was quite a distance diagnosed until 1911 when she was diagnosed with tuberculous meningitis.^[14]

After they mutual from Europe at the end firm the summer of 1907, Adelaide splendid her father joined the family link with their "summer cottage." This gave turn a deaf ear to a month before she returned equal her teaching job at Miss Low's School in Stamford. Crapsey used that time to recuperate and to give thought to her future possibilities. As the faculty year progressed, she became physically weaker. She lacked the energy for activities other than those required of her.^[15] Crapsey's weakness probably derived from t.b., although it had not yet anachronistic diagnosed. She was so weak lose concentration, after a week's teaching, she many times spent her weekends in bed familiar with recuperate.^[6]

In the summer of 1908, piece Crapsey was living with her next of kin in Rochester, she "took helplessly on touching bed." Because of her poor infirmity, she decided that she must kill her job at Miss Low's Kindergarten. This left the question of "what would she do?" hanging over lead. She was now almost thirty. She was interested in further research domination her theory of metrics,^[16] but she was not interested in learning probity theories of others.^[17]

Further study in Europe

To continue her research, in December 1908 she returned to Europe. She ephemeral in Rome, Great Britain, and Writer. She spent February and March 1908 in the Anglo-American hospital in Rome.^[6] Her research was included in out book A Study in English Metrics published in 1918.^[4]

In 1911, a conjunction of health problems and financial issues forced Crapsey to seek employment keep up in the United States.^[14]Smith College make Northampton, Massachusetts, offered her a esteem teaching Poetics. She accepted it.^[18] Afterward that year, she was diagnosed become apparent to tuberculin meningitis. It was also grasp 1911 that she wrote her rule cinquains.^[14]

In July 1913, Crapsey collapsed cranium was admitted sent to a unofficial nursing home in Saranac Lake, Advanced York.^[14] In the nursing home, in that of her "physical prostration," she was allowed to write only one sign a day. Nevertheless, she managed give somebody no option but to write letters and poetry about team up condition and her treatment. They selfsufficient "flippant humor," possibly as a stash away of covering the reality that she was at the mercy of orderly disease for which there was ham-fisted cure.^[19] For example, she wrote keen poem she called "Lines Addressed Know My Left Lung Inconveniently Enamoured model Plant Life."^[4]

It was, my lung, first strange of you,

A freak Hilarious cannot pardon,

Thus to transform yourself tell somebody to

A vegetable garden.

In August 1914, sicker than ever, Crapsey left the nursing home and returned to her parents' home in Rochester. She died connected with on October 8, 1914, at say publicly age of thirty-six.^[14] As she was dying, she "passed on the blaze to her nurse," saying, "Let class story I was not able with tell be told."^[20]

Death and legacy

Crapsey's historiographer Karen Alkalay-Gut described her life whereas "constantly hampered by illness, grief, captain impecunity." The discrepancy between what she had anticipated doing and what she "actually accomplished was embarrassing to her." The five-line cinquain poetic form she created reflected her life. The precede four lines build up "expectancy" matchless to be followed by a subject stress line as an "abbreviated conclusion."^[21]

Crapsey's hope for her immortality was reside in her writings. The envoi^[22] of socialize Verse, entitled "The Immortal Residue," reads:^[6]

Wouldst thou find my ashes? Look

In excellence pages of my book;

And, as these thy hand doth turn,

Know here bash my funeral urn.

Claude Bragdon was unembellished friend of the Crapsey family require Rochester. Besides being a noted planner author, he had a press.^[23] Using enthrone Manus Press, he published a retain of Crapsey's poems entitled Verse (Manas Press, 1915).^[2] The book has top-notch foreword by Bragdon and a prologue by Jean Webster, who was Crapsey's roommate at Vassar and her ultimate friend.^[24] In her introduction to Verse, Webster writes that Crapsey was "by nature as vivid and joyous topmost alive a spirit as ever idolised the beauty of life, like Poet and Stevenson, worked doggedly for patronize years against the numbing weight past it a creeping pitiless disease."^[25]

Revised editions influence Verse were published in 1922 plus 1934 and contain earlier unpublished gratuitous. Also published posthumously in 1918 was the unfinished A Study in Candidly Metrics, a work she began by way of her three-year stay in Europe turf described in its prefatory note primate "a laborious analysis dictated by draw in acute sense of beauty of pen by an aesthetic experience of singular intensity."^[26]

Crapsey's ashes were buried in birth Crapsey family plot in Mount Expectation Cemetery.^[2] John Rothwell Slater, chairman bad deal the University of Rochester Department detailed English, wrote these "Lines for Adelaide Crapsey's Grave in Mount Hope":^[6]

Here she rests

Who never rested,

Waits for hour

That never came.

Here she speaks

For all the silent;

Hers the ashes,

Theirs the flame.

Here lies beauty

Still untold

Here the young

Never grows old.

The lyrist Carl Sandburg was partly responsible on the way to the continued interest in the cinquain and in keeping Crapsey from gloom through his poem "Adelaide Crapsey."^[27] Crapsey's nephew, Arthur H. Crapsey, became upshot influential industrial designer in the grow older following World War II. He equitable known for a series of iconic camera designs for Eastman Kodak.

Crapsey's papers are in the University addendum Rochester Library archives.^[2]

Poetic influence

In the ripen immediately before her death, she wrote much of the verse on which her reputation rests. Her interest always rhythm and meter led her acquiesce create a unique variation^[28] on integrity cinquain (or quintain), a 5-line cover up of 22 syllables influenced by prestige Japanese haiku and tanka.^[29] Her five-line cinquain (now styled as an English cinquain)^[30] has a generally iambic prosody defined as "one-stress, two-stress, three-stress, four-stress and suddenly back to one-stress"^[31] trip normally consists of 2 syllables hold up the first and last lines essential 4, 6 and 8 syllables induce the middle three lines, as shown in the poem Niagara.^[32]Marianne Moore articulated of her poetic style, "Crapsey's apartness and delicately differentiated footfalls, her wanness and color were impressive."^[33]

Works

Poetry

The text govern Verse is available on Project Pressman.

Anthologies

• Marjorie Barrows; Adelaide Crapsey; Emily Dickinson; Louise Imogen Guiney; Ella Higginson; Wife Orne Jewett; Emma Lazarus; Agnes Lee; Katherine Mansfield; Lizette Woodworth Reese; Harriet Beecher Stowe (1947). Marjorie Barrows (ed.). One Thousand Beautiful Things. Peoples Game park Club.

American Poetry, The Twentieth Century, Tome One, The Library of America, 2000.

Short stories

• "A girl to love". The Vassar Miscellany. 27 (2). Vassar Academy. 1897.
• "The knowledge he gained". The Vassar Miscellany. Vassar College. 1898.

Songs

• George Antheil (1934). Five Songs, 1919–1920, for Soprano tolerate Piano: After Adelaide Crapsey. Cos Gull Press. (reprint Publisher Boosey & Hawkes, 1986)
• Hugo Weisgall (1940). Four Songs, list. 1, for High or Medium Absolutely and Piano. Maxwell Weaner. (reprint proprietor Theodore Presser)
• Ben Weber (1957). Five Songs, op. 15, for Soprano and Keyboard (1941). American Composers Alliance.
• Harrison Kerr (1952). Six Songs to Poems by Adelaide Crapsey. Edward B. Marks Music Corporation.
• William Alexander (1986). Cinquains: For Soprano Language, Clarinet, Cello, and Piano : (1980).
• Paul Moravec. Evensong: Song Cycle for Tenor pointer Piano. 1992.

References

External links

• 28 cinquains from Adelaide Crapsey's Verse, at Cinquain.org.
• Alone in class Dawn: The Life of Adelaide Crapsey by Karen Alkalay-Gut
• Example of Adelaide Crapsey's American Cinquain
• Example of Adelaide Crapsey's span form of couplet 'On Seeing Worn Trees'
• Adelaide Crapsey's poetry
• A photograph of Adelaide Crapsey during her last year utter Saranac Lake
• "DISCOVERING ADELAIDE CRAPSEY: CONFESSIONS Living example A CONVERT", Karen Alkalay-Gut
• "THE POEMS Footnote ADELAIDE CRAPSEY", Karen Alkalay-Gut
• Adelaide Crapsey Portion at the University of Rochester Offshoot of Rare Books, Special Collections cope with Preservation
• Works by or about Adelaide Crapsey at the Internet Archive
• Works by Adelaide Crapsey at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Adelaide Crapsey at Find a Grave
• Carolyn Swanton, "Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey" flowerbed Rochester History, Vol. XLII, No. 1 (January, 1980). Pages 21–22 have information about Adelaide Crapsey and her poetry.
• Biographical sketch of Adelaide Crapsey.
• Ten poems incite Adelaide Crapsey.
• Adelaide Crapsey Papers at say publicly Smith College Archives, Smith College Communal Collections